Is a multiple personality disorder a real thing or just a catch 22?

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If this is real, how is it diagnosed and what causes this?
No, multiple personality disorder is a real thing. It's when someone has multiple personalities...to the extreme and are not aware that they exist. They may even name these different people....but they are not aware they are doing this...to them....all of these personalities are real.  (+ info)

What are the symptoms of multiple personality disorder?

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10 points to the person who can give me the most information without making it TOO confusing.

What does the person with MPD act like?
Talk like?
MPD or now refered to as DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder). You have several concious people in you. If you have MPD, when an alter (alternate personality) is triggered, you, will lose conciousness, and the alternate personality will gain conciousness. Like a computer. There can be many different logins, but still the same machine. Alters are triggered by stress, anxiety and such. Typically, not prove, but understood as an adaption, or defense mechanism your brain does do to a traumatic event in your life. The event was so truamatic, you could not cope, so your brain developed someone else who could.

When alters are concious, you have no idea of what is going on and theres nothing you can do.

Alters tend to have different clothing/hair/ senses of fashion. Also may speak differently. Some cases, a female may have a lesbian or a male personality, that is convinced they are the opposite sex despite their physical "parts".

Antipsychotic, Anti Anxiety, Anti Depressant medications can really help.

If you want more info, email me. Not sure want you exactly want to know, but I can sure tell you. Lots of experience w/ other mental illnesses. Most people just wikipedia or site some website. They may seem to know what they are talking about, but don't know how to properly medically interpret it.

Noticed your post about "whats a mental hospital like". There are 2 wards, the detox ward (drug addicts) & the psych ward (mentall disorders). YOu will encouter interesting cases, like bi-polar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, ocd, delusional disorders, etc...The list goes on.

Your asking questions, you can't be that bad.  (+ info)

What is the difference between borderline personality disorder and multiple personality disorder?

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What is the difference?

They seem exactly the same so tell me the difference.

Please and thanks (:
BPD is a personality disorder, wherease MPD (now called DID or dissociative identity disorder) is a dissociative disorder.

DID sufferers have 2 or more (an average of about 8) DISTINCT personalities - typically the personalities are amnestic (do not recall) for the activities of the other. Although BPD sufferers can experience transient identity disturbances, it is NOT to the level of those with DID.

For example, a person with BPD might vacillate between behaving childishly/impulsively and behaving as a responsible adult: the key difference, is that those with BPD typically do NOT suffer from memory disturbances associated with any identity disturbance.

Basically, the two are quite drastically different. A couple of symptoms on which they converge are dissociation (minor for those with BPD, is the primary symptom for those with DID) and identity disturbances. In the case of DID, if the sufferer had switched from an adult to a child personality, he or she typically would have no recollection of the activities performed by the other personalities (an exception here would be the DID sufferer who has been in therapy a long time, and has exceptional levels of co-consciouaness).

Interestingly, a person with DID may have 1 (or more) personalities who suffer from BPD.  (+ info)

How many Americans suffer from multiple personality disorder?

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I need to know because I am writing a paper about it. I cannot find how many Americans suffer from MPD.

Please. Help.

Thanks!
It is now called Dissociative identity disorder by the DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), which is what is used in America. It is known as MPD internationally, though.

There are relatively high rates of it in America, compared to the rest of the world.

I can't find exact numbers for you. I've actually been searching on the web for a while. I did find that 85% on patients are female and "studies in North America and Europe indicate that as many as 5% of patients in psychiatric wards have undiagnosed DID."

But if you're writing a paper, none of the sources on the internet are accurate enough for you. You need to go to the library to get better sources.  (+ info)

In people with multiple personality disorder, are there any physical changes?

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Do physical changes occur when the personalities shift from one to another, like changes in eye color or perhaps freckles? MPD fascinates me, because it's like there's more than one soul in the mind. Is each personality a fragment of the main personality, or are they "downloaded" spirits, sent to help a person deal with something incredibly painful?
There are cases where the eyes change color. In more extreme cases, one alter may have a physical disorder, such as diabetes, while the others do not.
I don't know about each personality having it's own soul or not.
Some of my alters merge together sometimes, which would make having each one have a soul unnecessary.
I think there's still one spirit to the body, because it all goes away when the person dies.
People with DID are not, in spite of some popular beliefs, posessed by demons.  (+ info)

How can you tell if someone has a multiple personality disorder?

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What are some signs, symptops etc.? I googled it but i'd still like to see what others know. Thank you.
I know they renamed it to DID but a lot of people don't know that.
You can't reliably tell, unless someone tells you. :/

Yes, some people have handwriting changes, changes in voice and all that, but more often than not, people who are multiple will do everything in their power to make sure others can't tell.

Let it also be known that DID and MPD are /not/ the same thing. MPD assumes that someone who has had severe trauma has 'split' into one or more 'alters', that alters cannot know about one another on their own, and that such a thing is always a horrible, disordered and evil mental illness. DID is different in that it assumes the person doesn't even really have 'alters', the person just made it up to deal with the trauma and is simply delusional. The DID model isn't even really used outside of the United States.

Also, let it be known that multiplicity... having more than one person in one body... is NOT the same as MPD or DID, and is not always some mental issue created by trauma. It doesn't have to be a disorder. There are plenty of multiples out there who reject the MPD and DID models, who are happy, healthy and functional.

I have provided links below for people who wish to learn about healthy multiplicity. It is real, it's not as uncommon as people think, and as far as we can tell it seems that, in many cases, it's natural.  (+ info)

Where can I find information on multiple personality disorder?

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I want to know what MPD is and how it is formed.
Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), previously referred to as multiple personality disorder (MPD), is a dissociative disorder involving a disturbance of identity in which two or more separate and distinct personality states (or identities) control the individual's behavior at different times.
This disorder is believed to be caused by physical or sexual abuse in childhood. Young children have a pronounced ability to dissociate, and it is believed that those who are abused may learn to use dissociation as a defense. In effect, the child slips into a state of mind in which it seems that the abuse is not really occurring to him or her, but to somebody else. In time, such a child may begin to split off alter identities. Research has shown that the average age for the initial development of alters is 5.9 years.
Although childhood abuse is a major cause of dissociative identity disorder, that does not mean all the specific abuses alleged by people with this disorder really happened. In addition, some people were not abused at all, but rather, suffered an important early loss, such as the death of a parent, a serious physical illness, or some other very stressful experience.  (+ info)

Is there any relations between schizoprenia/multiple personality disorder/depression and cluster headaches?

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Is it common for people with
-Schizophrenia
-Depression
- or Multiple personality disorder

to suffer from Cluster headaches ("suicide headache")?
Wow you guys were a great help..... not
It is not any more common for people with preexisting conditions of schizophrenia, depression, or multiple personality disorder to suffer from cluster headaches than it is for people without those conditions to suffer from cluster headaches. However, there are a couple of points of connection:

1. As the term "suicide headache" implies, sufferers do come to have unusually high rates of depression and suicidal thoughts. A relatively large percentage of cluster headache sufferers who are unable to find treatment for these extremely painful headaches do attempt suicide. So while being diagnosed with depression does not mean you are any more likely to subsequently come down with cluster headaches, suffering from cluster headaches does mean that you are more likely to later qualify for a diagnosis of depression. Note that this is an "explainable depression" - it doesn't arise simply from a chemical imbalance in the brain, but rather arises out of circumstances that justify extreme dissatisfaction. In this way, the high depression rates among chronic cluster headache sufferers is not unlike the depression that one suffers when a loved one dies: it is real, but it is in some ways an appropriate response to the circumstances. Simply having depression as a preexisting condition does not make you more susceptible to cluster headaches, though.

2. One treatment that works to prevent cluster headaches in some sufferers is to take lithium. This drug is also prescribed for schizophrenia. Note that cluster headache sufferers who find that lithium can help control the headaches generally show no signs of schizophrenia, however. Doctors do not yet understand the mechanism by which lithium (or ANY other cluster headache treatment) works, and so it's not clear that the preventative value with respect to cluster headaches is at all related to the mechanism by which lithium helps to control schizophrenia. However, it is possible that the two are somehow linked. Having said that, schizophrenia rates are no higher among cluster sufferers than they are among the population at large, so a direct connection seems unlikely.  (+ info)

How can I tell if I have multiple personality disorder?

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Please ignore this question. My other self does not know what he's talking about.
Then maybe you should ask the other guy!!  (+ info)

Why do people think that Schizophrenia is multiple personality disorder?

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And how many of you looking at this question think it is?
I know the difference. I think people think that because they are uneducated about mental illness in general. It is still a very taboo topic in our society.  (+ info)

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